


Sometime a Fire

by what_alchemy



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Costume Parties & Masquerades, Genderqueer Character, Other, PWP, Public Sex, Rimming, don't look here for historical accuracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 18:14:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21396520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: It's a little too easy, getting Francis to escort him to the masquerade ball.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 20
Kudos: 102
Collections: The Terror Bingo (2019)





	Sometime a Fire

**Author's Note:**

> I'll follow you. I'll lead you about a round,  
Through bog, through bush, through brake,  
through brier; Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,  
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire,  
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,  
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn. (_A Midsummer Night's Dream_ 3.1.107-113)

James had quite lost Francis in the fray.

The banquet hall was brimming with masked merrymakers and adorned dancers. The din that rose around them was a dull roar punctuated by laughter. A string quartet and piano kept the tempo apace and drink encouraged an increasing looseness and gaiety in the partygoers as the night wore on.

James had so wanted to attend this masquerade ball, and he longed to do it in a dress. He wanted to be seen and admired and, God help him, given pride of place on the dance floor with Francis. Since their return, the fashion of cage crinoline had only exploded amongst the society ladies, both in popularity and in size. A pretty bit of architecture to be worn hanging from the waist, cage crinoline lent to the skirts great volume and structure, and made ladies look like delicate ballerinas set atop a celebration cake. James had been surprised by the force of his envy: he too wished to be seen and celebrated. While he was accustomed to dismissing the lurking thought that he should be a lither, whiter, more beautiful thing done up in lace and silk, the idea of the crinoline skirt closed around his mind like a fist and refused to release him. He had contented himself to wear what he would in the home he shared with Francis, but he suddenly ached to be as he was in public, among society, in the proverbial light of day. 

And then, he and Francis had received the invitation to a winter masquerade ball. With only a touch of cajoling, Francis agreed to attend, eyes gone soft at the naked hope in James’s request. James couldn’t countenance how he had happened upon such great fortune—to fall in love with a man who wished to make a life with him despite that life’s inherent difficulty, to have that man be kind and noble and good underneath the crusty outer layer that warded off the sufferance of fools, and to have that man not only tolerate James’s foibles, but to embrace them more passionately and joyously than James had ever dared dream. Through the horror and the scurvy and the loss of teeth and toes and muscle and friends and illusions, James cannot help but marvel at his luck. 

Francis consented to wear a new suit and a modest black mask over his eyes. James, on the other hand, courted extravagance but appeared more in keeping with the rest of the guests with the delicately painted mask of a fox over the whole of his face. James’s dress was a deep, jeweled blue that shimmered in the light. A corset gave him a cinched waist and the suggestion of a humble bosom. Beneath his skirt, the cage crinoline rustled and swayed like a willow tree in the breeze. Balanced atop it all, James was a graceful fairy queen.

James’s heart threatened to burst from his gullet when he and Francis arrived, but no one looked at them askance. Francis merely arched that rakish brow at him as if to put all his anxieties to bed, and like the snap of a hypnotist’s fingers, it did. The trouble was, Francis was soon swallowed by the crowd, and James was left to make small talk among strangers with a soft, unpracticed voice as he scanned the sea of revelers for that familiar head of greying hair. He had been obliged to disappoint four men hopeful for a dance with “such a tall and striking lady,” and found himself wringing his fingers together against the wall beside a table of canapés. 

Suddenly, he was startled by the queer sensation of his dress and his crinoline being lifted from behind. He suppressed a yelp and whipped around to find his crinoline where it belonged and no one close by, but then he felt a steadying weight on his hips—one hand, one stump—and he stilled.

“Francis,” he hissed, but if there was a reply, he did not hear it over the din. His heart trebled its pace, and he cast a quick glance around. No carousers were near, but he darted a hand out to snatch up a canapé just in case any eyes pried from afar. Francis stroked down over James’s hips and thighs, undid his garters, and then pulled down James’s bloomers, breath a hot puff over the skin of James’s arse. James’s breath hitched and his eyes fluttered shut before he forced them open again. With as much stealth as he had in him, he spread his legs, stepped out of the bloomers, planted his feet shoulder-width apart and hoped to a God that had surely forsaken him that he could get through this without collapsing.

Francis passed kisses over the small of James’s back, across his hips and down the modest curve of his cheeks, stroking up and down his leg with his good hand and steadying him with his stump all the while. James’s breath came quickly, and he felt his hole throb with all the force of his wild heart. Francis squeezed his cheek and pulled it away from its twin. He blew lightly over James’s hole, and James had to suppress the urge to squirm. He wanted to cant his hips up, to reach back and bury a hand in Francis’s hair and _push_ his face in, but resisted. He quivered with the effort of his restraint. 

Finally Francis swept the broad flat of his tongue up from bollocks to hole, and James choked down the bellow that would have all this come crashing down on their heads. Francis took his time licking and swirling the tip of his tongue over James’s hole, James’s knees threatening to turn to jelly. James straightened as well as he could and tipped his chin up, forcing himself not to fall to pieces even as Francis moved from tender swipes of his tongue to closing his lips over James’s hole and sucking gently, firmly, maddeningly. James’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he shoveled the canapé under his mask and into his mouth to keep from making some horrific, involuntary sound. He chewed and swallowed and gasped for breath.

James could feel his hole growing slack enough to admit Francis’s tongue, and Francis pressed his advantage, curling his tongue inside and setting an agonizing rhythm of fucking him and sucking him in turn. James’s prick was at full mast, no doubt soiling the layer of muslin it rubbed against so tantalizingly, and at attention as well were James’s nipples, aching at each minute shift of his corset. All around him people in fancy dress whirled in rapture at the music, at the company, at the titillation of anonymity and drunkenness and the boldness thereof. The mask made James’s breath hot in his face and loud in his ears, but he dared not tear it off. 

Francis pressed his face closer and changed to a rapid flickering of his tongue all around James’s throbbing, wanting arsehole. It was an exquisite, unrivaled sensation under whose onslaught Francis, damn him, knew James could not contain himself. Unbidden, a cry escaped James’s throat and one of his knees buckled. Francis held him up but his tongue remained relentless, dashing and prancing over James’s hole as happily as any dancer at the ball.

“I say, madame, are you quite all right?” came a voice to James’s left. Horrified, James turned his head and saw a concerned gentleman done up in all black and white with half a mask to match reaching his hand out towards James. Francis pressed James’s hips with hand and stump as if to say, “steady on, James,” but his tongue never relented.

James dragged in a ragged breath. He cleared his throat and aimed for a soft pitch to his voice.

“Oh yes, thank you,” he said. “I’m afraid I’m simply famished, and require quite a few canapés to shore myself up. How embarrassing.”

The gentleman stepped up beside him and James’s heart stopped. His arse clenched but Francis only cajoled it with sucking kisses and soft laps. James thought his prick might burst with the strain of his hardness even as his heart quailed to be so close to exposure. Blindly he groped for more canapés and nearly gagged himself with them, one after another, not even tasting them as he swallowed them down. 

“Never be embarrassed of your appetite, madame,” the man said. “It’s refreshing, in fact. Why should a lady of good breeding hide that she is as human as any man? I daresay, the world could use more of ladies like you.”

James covered the mouth of his mask in a gesture he’d seen women use to demure or express shyness. He dipped his head forward slightly, as if in a deferent bow, and the gentleman squared himself up and bowed more deeply. Francis, meanwhile, did not see fit to give James a reprieve, and redoubled his assault on James’s arse. He swiped firmly across James’s hole, punctuating the onslaught with the rhythmic press inside of the tip of his tongue. James nearly swooned.

“I would be honored to have a dance with you, whenever you are quite recovered,” the gentleman said. “Shall I leave you to your repast and return in say, ten minutes’ time?”

James nodded before he could think better of it, and when the man turned away and melted back into the sea of revelers, James struck out his hand and leaned his body against the edge of the table.

“Francis, you’ll be the death of me,” he said, and the only indication that Francis had heard him was the puff of air over his arse and the renewed vigor with which his tongue lashed James’s hole. James’s eyes rolled back and he thrust, as unobtrusively as he could manage, into the muslin petticoats under his crinoline. The fabric was light on the head of his prick, but it was wet with James’s enthusiasm and provided just enough pressure and drag to drive him closer to completion. He gripped the edge of the table and bent as if to inspect the canapés more closely, but spread his legs and Francis took the opportunity to close his mouth over his hole and suck at it forcefully even as he pulsed it with the flat of his tongue.

The combination of the muslin and Francis’s wicked tongue proved James’s undoing. The force of his arousal felt like a gathering storm at the base of his spine, and with Francis’s mouth frantic on his hole, the storm broke over him and he spent copiously into his petticoat, choking on a cry, stars cascading behind his eyelids. He staggered but Francis held him up, gentling the strokes of his tongue. When James stopped spasming, Francis pulled away and stroked down James’s hips and legs in long, slow lines, soothing him, kissing his thighs, the cheeks of his arse, the backs of his knees. 

Francis removed his hand from James’s body—a distinct loss, in James’s opinion—and James felt him jerking himself where he knelt, face pressed up against James’s arse. James licked his lips and suppressed another moan. He lifted his mask just enough to let the air stream in when he fanned himself. A woman in yellow passed by the table and sent him the kind of flat-lipped smile that was merely polite rather than inviting, and she plucked up a canapé and kept going. James hoped he was not heaving as he caught his breath and calmed his heart.

James caught sight of the man in black and white making his determined way back to the canapé table. James reached for another canapé. Francis breath was uneven and gasping on James’s skin, and James could feel his strokes growing more frantic.

The man in black and white approached, his smile plain under his half mask.

“I’m afraid I could not wait the appointed ten minutes,” he said. “You were simply too enchanting.”

James lifted up his canapé with one hand and mimed covering his mouth with the other. The man’s smile only grew, and James felt Francis bury his face into his arse and laugh. 

“Perhaps I can chaperone you until you’re finished,” the man said. Behind his mask, he winked. “Protect you from rogue canapé thieves.” 

“I cannot imagine I will be very good company,” James said. “I’m waiting for my cousin to escort me home.”

“My dear, are you unwell?”

“I’m afraid so,” James said. He realized his mistake when this served only to inflame the man’s sense of chivalry. James was now a damsel in distress, and Francis was gasping, heaving for breath underneath him.

“Come!” the man said, coming dangerously close to laying a hand of James’s arm. “I will have you rest away from all this, and then I shall fetch your cousin for you.”

“That’s very kind of you, sir,” James said. “But he will meet me here presently, I am sure.”

“I will put out the word,” the man promised zealously. He seized James’s hand quite improperly. “I know it is a masquerade, but surely you see you are in dire straits and the rules do not apply. Tell me his name and I shall send him to you as quickly as possible.”

Francis opened his mouth over James’s cheek and James felt the vibration of his choked off shout.

“Finished!” James blurted. He felt Francis sag against his legs. He braced himself to take the weight of Francis’s body. “My dear cousin is Finnish—have you met a Finnish man?” Francis thumped him on the arse and James shoved down the laughter than threatened to undo him.

“His _name,_ my dear, I’ll need his _name_.”

“Erm.” James racked his brain. He felt his crinoline shift and took a few shuffling steps to disguise the movement. In the corner of his eye, he saw Francis disappear beneath the canapé table. “Frederick!” James said. “Frederick is my cousin and there he is now!”

Francis emerged from the shadows without a hair out of place and took his place by James’s side. A warning flashed from behind the mask and James pressed his lips together to stem the hysteria that threatened to overtake him. He was going to fall to pieces as soon as they were in a hansom cab.

“Darling,” Francis said, offering his arm. James took it gladly. “I had word you were ill.” He had put on a faint accent, which James would never forget and Francis would no doubt never forgive. “You’ve had too much excitement for one night. Let’s get you to bed.”

“Not so ill as all that,” James said, and leaned into him. “One dance, Freddy?” Francis’s eyes glinted, but he trailed his hand over the curls on James’s head.

“Perhaps a turn about the room will revive you,” he said. Francis swept James away into the rollick of the dance without even an acknowledgement to the man in black and white. James was transfixed by Francis’s gaze and forgot the gentleman entirely. 

They whirled comfortably in a waltz that was entirely too close, too unstructured. The other dancers were simply spinning and swaying and moving along to the music without purpose now, drink and anonymity having stripped them of the niceties of etiquette.

“I would say ‘never do that again, Francis,’ but I’m afraid I liked it far too well,” James said. 

“I must admit, it was all I could think of when you first mentioned wearing this contraption,” Francis said, smoothing his hand over James’s hip. He rucked James in close to his body and set his mouth near his ear. “I should like to fuck you in it. Here, in front of everyone.”

James’s arsehole throbbed and his prick gave an optimistic twitch.

“Tell me,” James said. 

Francis spun James across the dance floor as surely as he spun his tale: how he would tear that fox mask off his face, lift up the crinoline to reveal James’s fine arse and delicious prick and full bollocks to the whole of the ball, fend off any man or woman who wished to claim him and then claim him himself, bury himself all the way to the hilt and howl like a triumphant wolf when he came. 

“I should have taken you right before that eager pup so hard for you by the bloody canapés,” Francis said.

“Were you jealous, Francis?”

“Incandescently.” 

James was suddenly aware that he had been divested of his underthings, his garters dangling, his stockings sagging, his genitals unfettered. He was probably still dripping into his petticoats, onto the floor. God only knew what Francis had done with their leavings. He hoped it was still cooling there on the floor by the canapés. All these proper English ladies and gentleman, dancing around it and stepping in it and tracking it all around London and back to their own homes—James shivered with the wrongness of it, and the force of his desire for just that. James laid his head on Francis’s shoulder, mask pushed far enough to the side to allow him to set his lips against Francis’s neck.

“Run away with me, Francis,” he said. “Somewhere we can be as we are. Somewhere warm and comfortable, where you can take me in the sunshine.”

They were swaying now, and Francis’s hand crept up, traced the line of James’s jaw and hovered at the rim of the mask. James held his breath.

Francis released him and stepped back, but he grasped James’s hands and tangled all their fingers together. Behind the mask, his eyes were bright.

“Anywhere you go, James,” he said, “I’ll follow.”

James, navigator, compass keeper, led Francis home.

**End**

**Author's Note:**

> For the "crinoline" square on my Terror Bingo card.


End file.
